A Social Media Milestone

PI is celebrating a number of social media milestones. The PROFItelevision and PROFIblogger YouTube channels are five years old; the MinutePROFINET YouTube channel is 4 years old. PI North America has been Tweeting since July of 2008. But the ten-year milestone (almost to the day) goes to the PROFIblog. We hope you are following the PROFIblog by visiting the page or having it delivered via RSS. But in case you cannot visit the celebratory, anniversary PROFIblog post, here it is:

I honestly don’t know how this happened. But the PROFIblog started ten years ago… quite inauspiciously. The first post said that we’re starting to blog. And check back a couple times a week for updates. Well, the couple times a week proved to be unsustainable. In fact, there were times when posts were few and far between. But for the last several years at least, the posts have come along at least once per week, usually on Tuesday. With occasional help from Michael Bowne and a guest blogger or two the pace continues.

The organization had some ulterior motives for starting a blog. It was rumored to be good for Search Engine Optimization. Somehow, I was the logical choice to be the blogger… er, PROFIblogger. But I like the blog because it gives me a place to express my opinion. Oh sure, sometimes the PROFIblog can be quite newsy. Reporting from a one-day training class or trade show for example. Sometimes the blog provided a place to vent. I used to get really upset when some organization or other maligned PROFINET with false information. (Truth in blogging – past tense in the preceding sentence obscures the fact that I still get upset.)

The PROFIblog disclaimer reminds everyone that what I post is my opinion, even if it is presented as fact. (But if I present it as fact, it’s because I think it is!) My posts do not go through an elaborate approval process – actually, no one looks at them prior to them going live.

Almost always the posts are about PROFINET and PROFIBUS, fieldbuses and Industrial Ethernets, networks and automation. And now Industrial Internet of Things and Industrie 4.0. Occasionally I go off topic. Those posts are usually engineering-related, but may be historical. (Click the off-topic tag for a sampling.) And since prior to the Silicon Valley PROFINET one-day training class I visited the Computer History Museum, there may be another off-topic post soon.

I hope you’ve learned some things from the PROFIblog in the last ten years, even from the occasional rant, pet peeve, or off-topic post.